Dirges
by slacker
Summary: Hurley updates a friend on current events. Mostly focuses on Charlie. This is set to take place after the finale. Warning: Based mostly on speculation and the preview for 3x21, but does contain some tiny spoilers.


**Summary:** Hurley is updating someone on recent events.

**Characters:** Hurley, but the main focus is on Charlie

**Warnings:** Pretty much everything is based on the preview for 3x21. The rest is speculation and wishful thinking. As Pacejunkie and other Charlie fans have cried, "Save the Junkie, Save the World!"

**Author's Notes:** This is my first narrative fic. Sorry if it gets a little confusing or boring in places! Oh and this is most likely a one-shot...you get to draw your own conclusions. :)

* * *

He is staring at the ocean again. Eyes are probably all glazed over, not really seeing the waves or that depressing endless horizon. His hands are moving at a fast clip, but I'm not sure if he's really listening. 

This has been his ritual for the past few days. Dude grabs his guitar from Claire's tent and walks to his spot upon a path so tread-worn that there's a permanent groove in the sand. There's some kind of permanent groove in him, too. Something warped and off about him, just like the guitar he holds in front of him as he absently strums that out-of-tune melody. He found some replacement strings in his guitar case to replace the ones snapped by Danielle's arrow, but I don't know if Claire or I can find replacement strings to fix him. We've run out on this island.

It's strange to think it's only been a few days since he came back to us. Or at least since most of him came back. Rose says...uh, Rose said once that he's got more lives than two cats. But I think each life chips away at him a little.

He won't talk about what happened between him disappearing and coming back. Jack and Kate are pissed because it might be important. But dude just keeps repeating that it was all pointless. Sayid thinks it was pointless for us to keep asking him. I think Sayid has already figured out what's "pointless"; the guy's all smart and analytical and stuff like that. He's starting to look a little beaten around the edges, too.

And no matter how many times the A-Team tries to convince him, Charlie absolutely won't go back to get _them_.

Doesn't matter that they saved him and, well, us. You know...Claire cried when he was gone. She held that ring of his and she cried. And Aaron scrunched up his tiny little face of his, turned an amazing shade of purple, and just wouldn't stop screaming at the top of his lungs. Babies know these things, man, just can sense them. It took Sun an entire night to put them both to bed.

When the sharks circled, we were sure he was totally gone. Desmond looked like he had been punched in the gut, but me? Me, I was numb. I think my therapist would have said something about denial and grieving and how it was a way of coping, but I dunno. It just didn't hit me until the minute he was back how much I was missing him. God, I'm so messed up.

It was a hell of a thing when he came back to us.

It was _hell_.

The Others came just like Ben said on that tape recorder. Jack's plan seemed really good, but the Others always like _know_ things a step ahead of us.

It was bad. We lost people. Good people like Rose, who wouldn't have hurt a single one of them. She was a mother to us all, you probably remember that. And when she stood in front of that girl Sandy and said No, an Other shot her. And Bernard, Bernard just lost it...he got one of them and injured another before they got him.

Jin went all Bruce Lee on the Others. Dude could kick some ass. But now, he's not...you know...anymore. Sun still won't speak to anybody.

I'm not sure I feel their deaths yet. There's not enough room inside right now to acknowledge it all. Numb is easier.

Ben had us at the end. He had us overpowered. Gun in his hand, pointed right at Jack. Some Other guy on his left and pointing his gun at Sawyer. A female Other on Ben's right, trained on Sayid. A move, even a twitch, and our leaders were dead. Ben was smiling. The jerk was smiling at us.

He cocked his gun really slowly. The other two copied him like it was a game. There was this coldness in his eyes. He was just like some sociopath I met once at the hospital when they were moving him to another ward. He was tied up on a gurney, but when he saw me, he said that he was going to punch my face off and he was going to rape the nurse. And I think he might've twitched a little bit but he was like all calm and stuff. Yeah, Ben is like that.

Anyway, Ben was saying some pompous, long-winded goodbye to Jack when several guns started firing from nowhere. Half of Ben's face came off... I'm still having nightmares about that. After the three of them dropped onto the sand, we saw _them_. Four people with smoking shotguns and revolvers--and Charlie--_Charlie! _at the edge of the jungle.

One of them, a greying dude in glasses and a frayed Dharma jumpsuit, shouted at the remaining Others that they were outnumbered and outgunned. And if they wanted to still live, they had better gather their dead and run off before glasses' friends got impatient. Zeke or Tom or whatever his name is looked really confused, which I thought was kind of strange, and then he laughed at them. Didn't seem to care that Kate still had a gun aimed at his head. He said something about being surprised that they were still around. But he still listened to the dude in glasses and had the Others pick up their dead and leave the beach, and we let them even though Sayid and Sawyer thought it was a really bad idea.

The new people took off right behind them. Didn't say one word to us, just saved us and took off. Never even got close enough for us to read the names off their jumpsuits. Kinda like something Danielle would do. Before they left, the one in glasses whispered something in Charlie's ear and clapped him on the back before walking away.

Charlie looked like he had gone to battle himself. He was wearing a faded Dharma t-shirt and a too-big jacket that had Charles Electrician embroidered on it. Apparently, one of those Other Others found it among their things and said he was destined to be its second owner. There's a fading bruise on Charlie's right cheek and his bottom lip was swollen. When he started walking towards Claire, he was limping a bit. He won't tell us how he got hurt, but I think those people did it to him.

The rest of the days have gone by quickly. We spent so much time digging graves and living in fear of the Others returning that there wasn't time to consider other things. Like being happy or getting off the island... Even Sayid isn't interested in playing with the phone right now.

Desmond said he hasn't had a vision since the moment Charlie disappeared. Charlie acted like he didn't care, but Claire and I...we want it to be good news. We're running low on that.

And now, now Charlie just stares at the ocean day after day. The fast tune he's always strumming slows and changes when he starts to forget that he's playing. His hands are creating funeral songs...you know, the ones that start with a d. We've had too many funerals lately. I wish we'd run out of those.


End file.
